It's the Culture, Stupid!
1992 and Our Political Future

Lyman A. Kellstedt, John C. Green,
James L. Guth & Corwin E. Smidt

What really happened in the 1992 presidential election? And what does it
tell us about American politics at the turn of the century? Although
postmortems are always a tricky business, interpreting the 1992 election
is particularly so. The defeat of an incumbent President, the election
of the first "baby boomer" by a slim plurality, and the extraordinary
campaign of an independent candidate are only the more obvious reasons
for the special attention that 1992 is likely to be paid in the history
books. But the question is, how will historians understand this
election? They will certainly fail to do so adequately unless they offer
proper recognition to the crucial influence of religious and cultural
factors.

Most accounts of the 1992 election hinge on the economy. Bush lost, it
is said, because the economy was sick and Republicans did not offer a
plausible cure. As the sign in Clinton's campaign headquarters read:
"It's the economy, stupid!" This interpretation of the election fits
nicely with the conventional view of American politics, held by
academics and journalists alike, that party coalitions and electoral
outcomes are rooted in economic self-interest. Thus, the combination of
voters' economic status, the performance of the economy-and governmental
policies affecting both-serves as the primary motivation for the vote.
From this perspective, disputes over abortion, gay rights, and other so-
called "social issues" are, at most, temporary diversions from normal
economic preoccupations. Some observers have even reinterpreted social
issue and foreign policy controversies as expressions of economic
distress, arguing, in effect, that the only real values in politics are
material ones.

This conventional wisdom is not so much wrong as wrongly stated. While
economic conditions clearly influence the vote, and often dramatically,
the effects of such conditions are channeled through the cultural
bedrock of the American party system. Most pundits and scholars do not
realize that the basic "building blocs" of American party coalitions
have always been cultural groups, whether in 1852, 1892, 1932, or 1992.
And religious traditions, comprised of denominations and churches with
shared values and worldviews, have always been among the most important
of these. Year in and year out, the reaction to parties, candidates, and
issues on the part of Evangelical, Mainline, and Black Protestants,
Catholics, Jews, and Seculars is critical to understanding elections.
The conventional wisdom, then, has it backwards: cultural affinities
constitute the long-term basis of electoral alignments, introducing
fundamental values into politics and structuring the debate over them,
while economic forces generate temporary disruptions of these culturally
defined alignments.

Thus while economic distress was critical to the electoral outcome in
1992, its effects are best understood within the cultural context of the
vote. Religious traditions tied most closely to the Republican Party
were less swayed by economic considerations than were their Democratic
counterparts, and the least religiously observant voters in both
traditions were the ones most influenced by economic woes. But of even
greater significance, the conventional economic interpretation masks
vital shifts in the cultural basis of party coalitions that were clearly
visible in the election returns.

Simply put, the historic conflict between rival coalitions of religious
traditions is being replaced by a new division between more-religious
and less-religious people across traditions. This emerging alignment
opens new fault lines in the cultural bedrock of party coalitions and
rechannels the effects of short-term economic conditions as well. The
beginnings of this new alignment were recognized in Robert Wuthnow's
discovery of the "restructuring of American religion," in Richard John
Neuhaus' complaint about the "naked public square," and in James Davison
Hunter's warnings of "culture wars." These divisions appeared first
among elites but are now poised to play a major role among the citizenry
at large.

II

The notion that economics is the foundation of American partisan
alignments has a rich pedigree, reaching back to the Federalist Papers,
forward through Karl Marx and his followers, to modern, positivist
social science. What is often forgotten is that assertions of economic
primacy in public life often were-and still are-part of a distinctive
political agenda. Consensus-oriented political leaders, advocates of
economic modernization, and professional social scientists have all
argued, in one way or another, that economic self-interest does-and
should-matter most in politics. Political elites typically want to avoid
the animosity associated with religious and cultural disputes, business
leaders seek to promote the growth and stability of a modern industrial
economy, and social scientists hope to construct objective, "value-free"
theories of society. Although these goals may well be meritorious, the
almost credal commitment to the primacy of economics has been
intellectually costly, obscuring key elements of American politics.

Other perspectives have been available: a veritable host of historians-
Paul Kleppner, Robert Swierenga, Richard Jensen, and Ronald Formisano,
to name only a few-have demonstrated that American political parties
have always been coalitions of "ethnocultural" or "ethnoreligious"
groups rather than economic or class-based alliances. The Whigs, and
later the Republicans, were the party of the culturally dominant
Protestant churches. This coalition represented the cultural "haves" who
sought to define the norms for the rest of the nation. In opposition,
the Democrats represented the cultural "have-nots," minority religions
like Catholics, Jews, "free thinkers," and some sectarian Protestants,
such as Southern Baptists, who shared an interest in resisting majority
impositions. And not surprisingly, individuals most committed to their
churches and denominations participated most fully in these alliances.
Of course, cultural and economic inequalities were often related, but
because of the limited scope of both government and the economy,
cultural differences usually prevailed. Although the exact composition
of these partisan alliances varied by era, geography, and the salience
of issues, the basic division between coalitions of competing religious
traditions is still visible today.

These cultural alliances were necessitated by basic features of the
American constitutional system. The First Amendment's establishment and
free exercise provisions guaranteed two things: that there would be no
state-sanctioned religion, and that there would be an extraordinary
variety of churches, denominations, and cultural groups. But this same
system also established single-member districts to elect the Congress
and an Electoral College to choose the President, both of which fostered
the familiar "two party system." The conjunction of the parties' goal to
maximize votes and the desire of religious communities to voice their
values made the aggregating of diverse groups into opposing coalitions
both necessary and effective. Indeed, disputes between (and sometimes
within) these cultural combines structured and restructured political
debate, clothing the public square with a richly woven tapestry of
values. Thus, American party politics has always involved "cultural
wars," and the genius of our system has been its ability to contain
these conflicts within civil and even productive bounds.

For most contemporary political scientists, however, the cultural basis
for party coalitions, if recognized at all, ended with the New Deal, the
historical backdrop for interpretations of contemporary politics.
According to conventional wisdom, the New Deal era saw the elevation of
economic issues to the center of the public agenda: the failures of
laissez-faire economic policies were redressed by national programs
intended to redistribute income, creating in their wake a powerful new
class-based alignment that pitted the economic "have-nots" against the
"haves."

Although not without considerable validity, this interpretation is much
enriched by adding to the picture the profound cultural forces behind
the New Deal. Long before the 1929 stock market crash, the dominant WASP
social and political ethos was under intense pressure from rival
cultures with roots in European Catholic and Jewish immigration and
concentrated in burgeoning metropolitan areas. In many respects, the New
Deal was less about income redistribution than about the recognition of
"group rights" benefitting these cultural challengers, a recognition
embedded in such policies as the fostering of labor unions, public works
programs, and social insurance. Even the makeup of the resulting New
Deal electoral coalition is most easily described in religious and
cultural terms: an alliance of Catholic and Jewish ethnics, with help
from Southern and Black Protestants, and a leavening of urban
cosmopolitans.

The key point is this: in order to have political relevance, economic
conditions must be interpreted. Religion and culture supply a
powerful framework for such interpretation, providing both the larger
worldview and the more specific values by which voters may understand
the contemporary world. Since religion and culture are deeply embedded
in the way people are raised and in the communities in which they live,
this framework remains quite stable, changing only gradually even in the
fast-paced modern world. But by the same token, the nationalization-and
globalization-of markets means that changes in economic conditions
nowadays affect all religious and cultural groups simultaneously. Thus
it is cultural alignments that provide the foundation of electoral
politics, setting the context for the impact of more immediate economic
concerns.

Unfortunately, most political scientists and many survey researchers
have missed this pattern, either because they tend to ignore history or
because they do not understand religion. As a result, little
intellectual capital has been invested in the arduous task of
understanding America's bewildering array of religious and cultural
groups. This neglect has been particularly costly for understanding the
variegated electoral faces of Protestantism: even today, most polls use
the term "Protestant" as if it were a meaningful category.

Gradually, however, the realities of cultural politics are becoming
evident even to secular academics, and some political scientists have
developed survey items that distinguish among religious traditions as
well as levels of religious commitment (the latter measured by church
attendance, devotional practices, and the like).

To oversimplify a complex picture, these new approaches reveal three
politically relevant groups among Protestants: the Mainline,
Evangelical, and Black Protestant traditions. Combined with more
accurate identification of Catholics, Jews, and Seculars (or religiously
uncommitted), as well as other smaller traditions, these categories
allow analysts to identify both the continuity of historic religious
coalitions and the transformations currently underway. The picture is
enhanced even more by taking into account levels of religious
commitment. In the past, the religiously committed in each tradition
were at the forefront of the rival coalitions. In an important
contemporary transformation, coalitions increasingly pit the religiously
committed within each tradition against those with little or no
commitment.

III

Despite the importance of economic conditions in 1992, then, religious
and cultural alignments were very much in evidence in voting patterns.
These alignments, in turn, are best understood in terms of a major
cultural shift underway for more than a generation, but by no means
complete. Since the New Deal a series of slow, but steady, changes has
brought the cultural hegemony of Mainline Protestantism to an end, and
with it the predominant set of values associated with the old term,
"Protestant." These cultural changes are too familiar to require
elaboration here: rapid upward mobility, the expansion of higher
education, the growth and development of the mass media, the end of
legal segregation, and alterations in women's roles. We can illustrate
the political implications of this cultural shift by examining the
transitions in voting patterns of the major religious traditions between
1960 and 1992.

Mainline Protestants were traditionally the backbone of the Republican
coalition. Their large numbers (approximately two-fifths of the
population in 1960), their relatively high levels of religious
commitment and political activity, and their conservative opinions on
most issues all combined to produce formidable support for the GOP up
and down the ticket. In the 1960 presidential election, for example, 69
percent of Mainliners voted Republican. By 1992, however, the situation
had changed dramatically. Sharp declines in relative numbers (to about
one-fifth of the population), even sharper reduction in religious
commitment, and deep divisions on social issues sapped the Mainline's
political strength and undermined its dominant position in the
Republican Party. George Bush received only 39 percent of Mainline votes
in the three-way race (or 50 percent of the two-party vote). Only their
customarily high turnout and overrepresentation among GOP elites kept
Mainliners from becoming distinctly junior partners in the Republican
coalition. Interestingly enough, social issues such as abortion and gay
rights were not central to Mainline defections from Bush in 1992.
Rather, most defectors exhibited low levels of religious commitment and
were dramatically influenced by short-term economic factors. Even so,
few Mainline voters defected to Clinton, preferring the more culturally
congenial Ross Perot.

If, over the past twenty years, the GOP had to rely primarily on
Mainline Protestants, the party would have suffered electoral disasters
far greater than that in 1992. But the Republicans benefitted greatly
from changes within another religious tradition, as Evangelical
Protestants simultaneously moved away from Democratic partisanship and
toward both greater political involvement and

Republican partisanship. Beginning with their reaction to the Catholic
John F. Kennedy's presence on the Democratic ticket in 1960 (when 60
percent voted Republican), Evangelicals steadily moved away from
preference for Democratic candidates, a movement interrupted only
temporarily by the candidacies of Southerners Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy
Carter, the latter a fellow Evangelical. By 1992, Evangelicals were
George Bush's best supporters, giving him 56 percent of their votes in
the three-way race (and 67 percent of the two-party vote); and to a
greater extent than ever before they backed Republican candidates all
the way down the ticket. This shift was amplified by the Evangelicals'
steady religious market share since 1960 (about one-quarter of the
population) and consistent conservatism on social and foreign policy
issues-a conservatism that gave evidence of expanding to include
traditional Republican economic issues. And their voting turnout
increased somewhat since 1960, although still lagging a bit behind their
Mainline cousins in 1992.

Thus a combination of factors has united white Protestants in the same
coalition, with the former senior partner becoming a junior one in terms
of total vote support for the GOP. Like all such coalitions, this new
alignment is fraught with internal tensions, particularly over social
issues. How these tensions will be resolved is a matter of conjecture,
but in 1992 the new partners and their social issue conservatism helped
George Bush far more than they hurt him. Not only did religious
conservatives provide Bush with a lion's share of his votes, but they
also expressed more positive views of the economy, largely interpreting
the recession through the lens of their cultural allegiance. Given this
situation, it is not surprising that few Evangelicals voted for Perot,
and that those few who did showed lower levels of religious commitment.

In 1960, the Kennedy campaign achieved a record Democratic vote (82
percent) from Roman Catholics. The large size of this constituency (one-
fifth of the adult population), their high levels of religious
commitment and turnout, and strongly liberal opinions on the issues of
the day all combined to make Catholics a formidable Democratic voting
bloc. Between 1960 and 1992, Catholics increased in relative numbers (to
almost one-quarter of the population), but experienced a decline in
religious commitment that paralleled the Protestant Mainline. Following
which, as in the Mainline, serious rifts opened among Catholics on
social and economic issues. The result was increased Catholic defection
to the GOP, but by two very different groups: traditionalists motivated
by social and foreign policy issues, and the less religiously observant
enticed by Reagan's promises of prosperity. In 1992, many of the fair-
weather Catholic "economic Republicans" returned to the Democratic fold,
giving Bill Clinton 45 percent of the Catholic vote in the three-way
race (59 percent of the two-party vote). But just as religiously
committed Evangelical and Mainline Protestants were much more likely to
vote Republican than their nominally religious brethren, regularly
attending white Catholics gave Bush a narrow plurality over Clinton (41
percent to 39 percent), while less-observant Catholics gave Clinton a
bigger margin (44 percent to 33 percent). Again, as with the
Protestants, Catholic Perot voters were drawn from the least religiously
observant.

The electoral contributions of two smaller religious traditions, Jews
and Black Protestants, should be noted as well. Jews are both culturally
and economically liberal, and have been solidly Democratic since long
before 1960. As for the Black Protestants, prior to 1964 they included a
significant Republican minority, but since then have been overwhelmingly
Democratic. Both groups were crucial elements of Clinton's coalition in
1992; and although there are religious conservatives in both traditions,
the GOP has made only marginal inroads among them so far.

Almost unnoticed has been the growth and political relevance of the
Secular segment of the population. Given the sporadic attention given to
religion by survey researchers, it has been difficult to track the
expansion of this group with certainty. The best estimates suggest that
Seculars constituted less than one-tenth of the population in 1960, but
had expanded to at least one-fifth by 1992. Although many observers see
this growth only as evidence of the increasing irrelevance of religion,
the nonreligious represent an important cultural group, as liberal on
social issues as the most committed religious people are conservative.
Seculars tend to vote Democratic at all levels, with 54 percent
supporting Kennedy in 1960, but there have been exceptions to this
pattern; in 1980, 68 percent voted for Ronald Reagan on the basis of
short-term economic considerations. In 1992, however, Seculars moved
dramatically back into the Democratic column, with 55 percent supporting
Clinton in a three-way race (73 percent of the two-party vote). While
Seculars constitute a partial replacement for the departed Evangelicals
in the Democratic coalition, their impact has been lessened by their low
rates of turnout.

In sum, then, 1992 voting patterns reveal historic cultural alignments,
albeit reshuffled by the cultural changes of the last generation, and
modified by the short-term effects of a weak economy. Bush attracted a
coalition of Evangelical and Mainline Protestants, joined by some
strongly religious Catholics, while Clinton won with a coalition of less
religiously adherent Catholics, most Blacks, Jews, and Seculars, and
with a smattering of Protestants. Perot picked up the votes of the
economically disaffected with low religious commitments.

These patterns show the limitations of defining electoral alignments
largely in terms of short-term economic factors. Evangelical and high-
commitment Mainline Protestants were generally less affluent and hence
most affected by the recession, and yet they stood most firmly behind
Bush. Meanwhile, Jewish and Secular voters were generally more affluent
and least burdened by hard times, yet they were among the strongest
supporters of Bill Clinton. Economic conditions had their largest effect
among Perot's supporters, who were the most disconnected from social and
political life-a fact reflected in their intense disgust with government
and politics. Beyond demonstrating the power of culture in electoral
alignments, however, 1992 reveals the effects of a generation of
cultural polarization, and the emergence of a new kind of electoral
alignment.

IV

The new cultural politics in 1992 differs from past alignments in kind
rather than degree. The historic conflict between coalitions of rival
religious traditions is being replaced by a new division between more-
religious and less-religious people across those traditions. Our
analysis suggests that one of the emerging coalitions will be united by
belief in God, an understanding that such belief has implications for
public life, and a preference for religious language in political
discourse. The opposite coalition will be united by nontheistic or at
least nonorthodox beliefs, the policy implications of such beliefs, and
hostility to religious language in political debate. If this analysis is
correct, Evangelicals and committed members of other religious
traditions could find themselves united in the Republican Party facing
Seculars and less committed members in other traditions among the
Democrats.

From this perspective, contemporary social issue disputes, such as that
over abortion, are not temporary aberrations, but rather the stuff of
future politics, where an agenda of "traditional values" confronts an
agenda of "personal liberation" or what Ronald Inglehart has called,
somewhat misleadingly, "postmaterial" values. Such disputes include a
host of related issues, such as women's rights, birth control, sex
education, gay rights, and regulation of pornography, and with only a
little difficulty could be expanded to broader topics such as family
policy, health insurance, public school curricula, employment practices,
and funding for the arts. More important, such political agendas might
eventually incorporate economic questions like taxes, business
regulation, and free trade. Finally, voters tied firmly to either
coalition would then interpret changing economic conditions in light of
these prior, cultural, allegiances.

This kind of alignment is new to the United States, but divisions of
this sort have been common in European democracies for centuries. While
it is unclear how quickly such an alignment will solidify, it will
introduce a new set of values into public life and restructure the
debate about them, supplementing, if not replacing, older cultural
alignments. If the resulting structure seems complex, we should remember
Walter Dean Burnham's observation that each succeeding realignment of
American voting habits leaves behind a residue never entirely absorbed
into the "new" structure of political debate.

Indeed, one must resist the temptation to think of this emerging
alignment in terms of the conventional liberal-conservative continuum.
The "religious" coalition, for example, might break the mold on welfare
policy by combining generosity with curbs on anti-social behavior, or
the "secular" alliance could redefine a family policy to balance the
concerns of adults with the needs of children. In fact, such departures
from present thinking are quite likely because these new coalitions will
require significant adjustments among participating religious
traditions. For instance, more orthodox Evangelical and Mainline
Protestants will have to learn to cooperate among themselves, as well as
with traditionalist Catholics and Jews, and with other religious
conservatives, such as Mormons. Likewise, less orthodox religionists and
Seculars will need to develop a firm moral and ethical basis for their
politics. Both sides will need to define themselves in positive terms
rather than only in opposition to the real or imagined excesses of the
other.

What the new alignment is sure to bring, however, is an end to the
historic dominance of large, pluralistic denominations, such as the
United Methodist and Roman Catholic churches, which have presumed to
speak broadly for societal values. Once the linchpins of the traditional
party coalitions, these bodies will increasingly come under pressure
from both the religious right and the secular left. As a result, their
ability to maintain a distinctive voice in public debate, let alone a
consensual one, will be extremely difficult.

Which side of this new alignment will prevail? At this juncture it is
unclear who are the cultural "haves" and who are the "have-nots." This
situation can be illustrated by the new core constituencies of the GOP
and the Democrats, Evangelicals and Seculars, respectively. Both groups
like to claim that they are "disadvantaged" in the public square and
victims of "cultural aggression," but neither is lacking in resources
for offense or defense. The vast institutional empire of Evangelicals,
ranging from thousands of local churches to publishing houses, colleges,
and mass media outlets, is quite impressive. But Seculars are linked
closely to the nation's educational, journalistic, and scientific
establishments to an equally impressive extent. Will the negative
consequences of secularization bring the religious alliance more
recruits? Will the continued advance of modernity give the nonreligious
coalition better weaponry? Or will an even division of power obtain?
While any final judgment is premature, the strong connections of the
religious alliance to the grassroots suggest that the religious
coalition may have an advantage in the immediate future, but that
secularizing forces may gain the upper hand in the longer run.

Some observers find the emergence of this new alignment troubling
because it generates unfamiliar kinds of conflict, but in a democracy
conflict is often a prelude to consensus. Although there is no guarantee
that cultural disputes can be kept within reasonable bounds, suppressing
disagreement will not maintain the peace. Some disagreements are
resolvable only by agreements to disagree or acceptance of the
provisional nature of victories and defeats. After all, unhappiness with
social and political outcomes is not disastrous if the losing positions
were based on principle and if the political system provided a fair
hearing for all sides. The view that a good politics requires a
detailed, preexisting consensus on values is as unwarranted as the
notion that economics alone drives politics. In fact, the present
restructuring of electoral alignments is a potent means of bringing
neglected values to the fore and organizing the debate about them.

A cultural perspective on the 1992 election, then, suggests three
conclusions. First, the conventional wisdom on the role of economic
factors in elections is overstated; even in a year when such short-term
factors were particularly strong, they operated within the context of
long-term cultural alignments. Second, the basic building blocs of party
coalitions are cultural groups, chief among them religious traditions,
and continuity and change among these blocs is of lasting importance.
Finally, a new cultural underpinning to party alignments emerged in
1992, pitting coalitions of more- and less-religious people against one
another.

These conclusions suggest that the "public square" has never been-and
can never be-denuded of values, despite the best efforts of some groups
to promote the historically false argument that American society is
based on a strict separation of faith and public life. The answer to the
"naked public square," George Weigel reminds us, is to reconstruct civil
society on the basis of common values. Cultural disputes have always
been-and always will be-integral parts of American elections, but, as
Stephen Carter argues, an enhanced appreciation of religion is an
effective antidote to cultural "warfare." In any case, it is clear that
contemporary observers and future historians alike ignore religious and
cultural factors at their peril.

Messrs, Kellstedt, Green, Guth & Smidt are professors of political
science at Wheaton College, the University of Akron, Furman University,
and Galvin College respectively.